In 2004, Silverton Hospital decided to solidify a secondary market in medical care by providing complementary medicine and promoting health to an underserved region in Oregon. A team was assembled to brainstorm/dream/invent the project vision and to challenge those ideas.

That vision was manifested in three distinct areas: to empower customers to take charge of their health and transformation, to encompass needed customer services in a supportive, natural environment, and to provide a dramatic and memorable place of health.

Project category: Conversion (completed November 2006)

Chief administrator: William Winter, CEO, (503) 873-1500

Firm: Clark/Kjos Architects, LLC, (503) 224-4848

Design team: Architecture/Interior Design, Clark/Kjos Architects, LLC; Client, Silverton Hospital; Developer, Webstar V, LLC; Structural Engineering, Lewis & Van Vleet, Inc.; Mechanical/Electrical Engineering, MFIA, Inc.; Landscape Architecture, Murase Associates

Photography: Michael Mathers

Total building area (sq. ft.): 89,000

Construction cost/sq. ft.: $113

Total construction cost (excluding land): $10,033,301)

The result is WellSpring Medical Center. Innovations include various care providers such as Integrative Medicine, Aesthetic Medicine, and Dermatology. Services include a spa, café, retail outlet, fitness center, and a Health Education and Conference Center open to the community.

The client acquired an empty 89,000-sq.-ft. K-Mart building at a strategic location in the city of Woodburn. To revise the impoverished building form, layers of curved walls were added, as were various architectural forms using an array of materials. Two healing gardens with carefully placed artwork, plantings, and landforms were inserted strategically into the plan, and the parking lot was converted into a garden for cars.


WellSpring incorporates “green” materials (low-VOC, recycled content, rapidly renewable) and construction practices (energy-saving strategies, daylighting, etc.) in keeping with its holistic theme of health. By bringing nature indoors with four-season healing and herbal gardens, rain-integrated water features, natural-finish products, and other sustainable strategies, WellSpring walks the talk to its customers.